Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 47

“I have been think­ing it over again, Eliz­abeth,” said her un­cle, as they drove from the town; “and re­al­ly, up­on se­ri­ous con­sid­er­ation, I am much more in­clined than I was to judge as your el­dest sis­ter does on the mat­ter. It ap­pears to me so very un­like­ly that any young man should form such a de­sign against a girl who is by no means un­pro­tect­ed or friend­less, and who was ac­tu­al­ly stay­ing in his colonel’s fam­ily, that I am strong­ly in­clined to hope the best. Could he ex­pect that her friends would not step for­ward? Could he ex­pect to be no­ticed again by the reg­iment, af­ter such an af­front to Colonel Forster? His temp­ta­tion is not ad­equate to the risk!”

“Do you re­al­ly think so?” cried Eliz­abeth, bright­en­ing up for a mo­ment.

“Up­on my word,” said Mrs. Gar­diner, “I be­gin to be of your un­cle’s opin­ion. It is re­al­ly too great a vi­ola­tion of de­cen­cy, hon­our, and in­ter­est, for him to be guilty of. I can­not think so very ill of Wick­ham. Can you your­self, Lizzy, so whol­ly give him up, as to be­lieve him ca­pa­ble of it?”

“Not, per­haps, of ne­glect­ing his own in­ter­est; but of ev­ery oth­er ne­glect I can be­lieve him ca­pa­ble. If, in­deed, it should be so! But I dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scot­land if that had been the case?”

“In the first place,” replied Mr. Gar­diner, “there is no ab­so­lute proof that they are not gone to Scot­land.”

“Oh! but their re­mov­ing from the chaise in­to a hack­ney coach is such a pre­sump­tion! And, be­sides, no traces of them were to be found on the Bar­net road.”

“Well, then–sup­pos­ing them to be in Lon­don. They may be there, though for the pur­pose of con­ceal­ment, for no more ex­cep­tion­al pur­pose. It is not like­ly that mon­ey should be very abun­dant on ei­ther side; and it might strike them that they could be more eco­nom­ical­ly, though less ex­pe­di­tious­ly, mar­ried in Lon­don than in Scot­land.”

“But why all this se­cre­cy? Why any fear of de­tec­tion? Why must their mar­riage be pri­vate? Oh, no, no–this is not like­ly. His most par­tic­ular friend, you see by Jane’s ac­count, was per­suad­ed of his nev­er in­tend­ing to mar­ry her. Wick­ham will nev­er mar­ry a wom­an with­out some mon­ey. He can­not af­ford it. And what claims has Ly­dia–what at­trac­tion has she be­yond youth, health, and good hu­mour that could make him, for her sake, forego ev­ery chance of ben­efit­ing him­self by mar­ry­ing well? As to what re­straint the ap­pre­hen­sions of dis­grace in the corps might throw on a dis­hon­ourable elope­ment with her, I am not able to judge; for I know noth­ing of the ef­fects that such a step might pro­duce. But as to your oth­er ob­jec­tion, I am afraid it will hard­ly hold good. Ly­dia has no broth­ers to step for­ward; and he might imag­ine, from my fa­ther’s be­haviour, from his in­do­lence and the lit­tle at­ten­tion he has ev­er seemed to give to what was go­ing for­ward in his fam­ily, that HE would do as lit­tle, and think as lit­tle about it, as any fa­ther could do, in such a mat­ter.”

“But can you think that Ly­dia is so lost to ev­ery­thing but love of him as to con­sent to live with him on any terms oth­er than mar­riage?”

“It does seem, and it is most shock­ing in­deed,” replied Eliz­abeth, with tears in her eyes, “that a sis­ter’s sense of de­cen­cy and virtue in such a point should ad­mit of doubt. But, re­al­ly, I know not what to say. Per­haps I am not do­ing her jus­tice. But she is very young; she has nev­er been taught to think on se­ri­ous sub­jects; and for the last half-​year, nay, for a twelve­month–she has been giv­en up to noth­ing but amuse­ment and van­ity. She has been al­lowed to dis­pose of her time in the most idle and frivolous man­ner, and to adopt any opin­ions that came in her way. Since the —-shire were first quar­tered in Mery­ton, noth­ing but love, flir­ta­tion, and of­fi­cers have been in her head. She has been do­ing ev­ery­thing in her pow­er by think­ing and talk­ing on the sub­ject, to give greater–what shall I call it? sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to her feel­ings; which are nat­ural­ly live­ly enough. And we all know that Wick­ham has ev­ery charm of per­son and ad­dress that can cap­ti­vate a wom­an.”

“But you see that Jane,” said her aunt, “does not think so very ill of Wick­ham as to be­lieve him ca­pa­ble of the at­tempt.”

“Of whom does Jane ev­er think ill? And who is there, what­ev­er might be their for­mer con­duct, that she would think ca­pa­ble of such an at­tempt, till it were proved against them? But Jane knows, as well as I do, what Wick­ham re­al­ly is. We both know that he has been prof­li­gate in ev­ery sense of the word; that he has nei­ther in­tegri­ty nor hon­our; that he is as false and de­ceit­ful as he is in­sin­uat­ing.”

“And do you re­al­ly know all this?” cried Mrs. Gar­diner, whose cu­rios­ity as to the mode of her in­tel­li­gence was all alive.

“I do in­deed,” replied Eliz­abeth, colour­ing. “I told you, the oth­er day, of his in­fa­mous be­haviour to Mr. Dar­cy; and you your­self, when last at Long­bourn, heard in what man­ner he spoke of the man who had be­haved with such for­bear­ance and lib­er­al­ity to­wards him. And there are oth­er cir­cum­stances which I am not at lib­er­ty–which it is not worth while to re­late; but his lies about the whole Pem­ber­ley fam­ily are end­less. From what he said of Miss Dar­cy I was thor­ough­ly pre­pared to see a proud, re­served, dis­agree­able girl. Yet he knew to the con­trary him­self. He must know that she was as ami­able and un­pre­tend­ing as we have found her.”

“But does Ly­dia know noth­ing of this? can she be ig­no­rant of what you and Jane seem so well to un­der­stand?”

“Oh, yes!–that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and saw so much both of Mr. Dar­cy and his re­la­tion Colonel Fitzwilliam, I was ig­no­rant of the truth my­self. And when I re­turned home, the —-shire was to leave Mery­ton in a week or fort­night’s time. As that was the case, nei­ther Jane, to whom I re­lat­ed the whole, nor I, thought it nec­es­sary to make our knowl­edge pub­lic; for of what use could it ap­par­ent­ly be to any one, that the good opin­ion which all the neigh­bour­hood had of him should then be over­thrown? And even when it was set­tled that Ly­dia should go with Mrs. Forster, the ne­ces­si­ty of open­ing her eyes to his char­ac­ter nev­er oc­curred to me. That SHE could be in any dan­ger from the de­cep­tion nev­er en­tered my head. That such a con­se­quence as THIS could en­sue, you may eas­ily be­lieve, was far enough from my thoughts.”

“When they all re­moved to Brighton, there­fore, you had no rea­son, I sup­pose, to be­lieve them fond of each oth­er?”

“Not the slight­est. I can re­mem­ber no symp­tom of af­fec­tion on ei­ther side; and had any­thing of the kind been per­cep­ti­ble, you must be aware that ours is not a fam­ily on which it could be thrown away. When first he en­tered the corps, she was ready enough to ad­mire him; but so we all were. Ev­ery girl in or near Mery­ton was out of her sens­es about him for the first two months; but he nev­er dis­tin­guished HER by any par­tic­ular at­ten­tion; and, con­se­quent­ly, af­ter a mod­er­ate pe­ri­od of ex­trav­agant and wild ad­mi­ra­tion, her fan­cy for him gave way, and oth­ers of the reg­iment, who treat­ed her with more dis­tinc­tion, again be­came her favourites.”

* * * * *

It may be eas­ily be­lieved, that how­ev­er lit­tle of nov­el­ty could be added to their fears, hopes, and con­jec­tures, on this in­ter­est­ing sub­ject, by its re­peat­ed dis­cus­sion, no oth­er could de­tain them from it long, dur­ing the whole of the jour­ney. From Eliz­abeth’s thoughts it was nev­er ab­sent. Fixed there by the keen­est of all an­guish, self-​re­proach, she could find no in­ter­val of ease or for­get­ful­ness.

They trav­elled as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble, and, sleep­ing one night on the road, reached Long­bourn by din­ner time the next day. It was a com­fort to Eliz­abeth to con­sid­er that Jane could not have been wea­ried by long ex­pec­ta­tions.

The lit­tle Gar­diners, at­tract­ed by the sight of a chaise, were stand­ing on the steps of the house as they en­tered the pad­dock; and, when the car­riage drove up to the door, the joy­ful sur­prise that light­ed up their faces, and dis­played it­self over their whole bod­ies, in a va­ri­ety of ca­pers and frisks, was the first pleas­ing earnest of their wel­come.

Eliz­abeth jumped out; and, af­ter giv­ing each of them a hasty kiss, hur­ried in­to the vestibule, where Jane, who came run­ning down from her moth­er’s apart­ment, im­me­di­ate­ly met her.

Eliz­abeth, as she af­fec­tion­ate­ly em­braced her, whilst tears filled the eyes of both, lost not a mo­ment in ask­ing whether any­thing had been heard of the fugi­tives.

“Not yet,” replied Jane. “But now that my dear un­cle is come, I hope ev­ery­thing will be well.”

“Is my fa­ther in town?”

“Yes, he went on Tues­day, as I wrote you word.”

“And have you heard from him of­ten?”

“We have heard on­ly twice. He wrote me a few lines on Wednes­day to say that he had ar­rived in safe­ty, and to give me his di­rec­tions, which I par­tic­ular­ly begged him to do. He mere­ly added that he should not write again till he had some­thing of im­por­tance to men­tion.”

“And my moth­er–how is she? How are you all?”

“My moth­er is tol­er­ably well, I trust; though her spir­its are great­ly shak­en. She is up­stairs and will have great sat­is­fac­tion in see­ing you all. She does not yet leave her dress­ing-​room. Mary and Kit­ty are, thank Heav­en, are quite well.”

“But you–how are you?” cried Eliz­abeth. “You look pale. How much you must have gone through!”

Her sis­ter, how­ev­er, as­sured her of her be­ing per­fect­ly well; and their con­ver­sa­tion, which had been pass­ing while Mr. and Mrs. Gar­diner were en­gaged with their chil­dren, was now put an end to by the ap­proach of the whole par­ty. Jane ran to her un­cle and aunt, and wel­comed and thanked them both, with al­ter­nate smiles and tears.

When they were all in the draw­ing-​room, the ques­tions which Eliz­abeth had al­ready asked were of course re­peat­ed by the oth­ers, and they soon found that Jane had no in­tel­li­gence to give. The san­guine hope of good, how­ev­er, which the benev­olence of her heart sug­gest­ed had not yet de­sert­ed her; she still ex­pect­ed that it would all end well, and that ev­ery morn­ing would bring some let­ter, ei­ther from Ly­dia or her fa­ther, to ex­plain their pro­ceed­ings, and, per­haps, an­nounce their mar­riage.

Mrs. Ben­net, to whose apart­ment they all re­paired, af­ter a few min­utes’ con­ver­sa­tion to­geth­er, re­ceived them ex­act­ly as might be ex­pect­ed; with tears and lamen­ta­tions of re­gret, in­vec­tives against the vil­lain­ous con­duct of Wick­ham, and com­plaints of her own suf­fer­ings and ill-​us­age; blam­ing ev­ery­body but the per­son to whose ill-​judg­ing in­dul­gence the er­rors of her daugh­ter must prin­ci­pal­ly be ow­ing.

“If I had been able,” said she, “to car­ry my point in go­ing to Brighton, with all my fam­ily, THIS would not have hap­pened; but poor dear Ly­dia had no­body to take care of her. Why did the Forsters ev­er let her go out of their sight? I am sure there was some great ne­glect or oth­er on their side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been well looked af­ter. I al­ways thought they were very un­fit to have the charge of her; but I was over­ruled, as I al­ways am. Poor dear child! And now here’s Mr. Ben­net gone away, and I know he will fight Wick­ham, wher­ev­er he meets him and then he will be killed, and what is to be­come of us all? The Collins­es will turn us out be­fore he is cold in his grave, and if you are not kind to us, broth­er, I do not know what we shall do.”

They all ex­claimed against such ter­rif­ic ideas; and Mr. Gar­diner, af­ter gen­er­al as­sur­ances of his af­fec­tion for her and all her fam­ily, told her that he meant to be in Lon­don the very next day, and would as­sist Mr. Ben­net in ev­ery en­deav­our for re­cov­er­ing Ly­dia.

“Do not give way to use­less alarm,” added he; “though it is right to be pre­pared for the worst, there is no oc­ca­sion to look on it as cer­tain. It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a few days more we may gain some news of them; and till we know that they are not mar­ried, and have no de­sign of mar­ry­ing, do not let us give the mat­ter over as lost. As soon as I get to town I shall go to my broth­er, and make him come home with me to Gracechurch Street; and then we may con­sult to­geth­er as to what is to be done.”

“Oh! my dear broth­er,” replied Mrs. Ben­net, “that is ex­act­ly what I could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out, wher­ev­er they may be; and if they are not mar­ried al­ready, MAKE them mar­ry. And as for wed­ding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but tell Ly­dia she shall have as much mon­ey as she choos­es to buy them, af­ter they are mar­ried. And, above all, keep Mr. Ben­net from fight­ing. Tell him what a dread­ful state I am in, that I am fright­ed out of my wits–and have such trem­blings, such flut­ter­ings, all over me–such spasms in my side and pains in my head, and such beat­ings at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Ly­dia not to give any di­rec­tions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does not know which are the best ware­hous­es. Oh, broth­er, how kind you are! I know you will con­trive it all.”

But Mr. Gar­diner, though he as­sured her again of his earnest en­deav­ours in the cause, could not avoid rec­om­mend­ing mod­er­ation to her, as well in her hopes as her fear; and af­ter talk­ing with her in this man­ner till din­ner was on the ta­ble, they all left her to vent all her feel­ings on the house­keep­er, who at­tend­ed in the ab­sence of her daugh­ters.

Though her broth­er and sis­ter were per­suad­ed that there was no re­al oc­ca­sion for such a seclu­sion from the fam­ily, they did not at­tempt to op­pose it, for they knew that she had not pru­dence enough to hold her tongue be­fore the ser­vants, while they wait­ed at ta­ble, and judged it bet­ter that ONE on­ly of the house­hold, and the one whom they could most trust should com­pre­hend all her fears and so­lic­itude on the sub­ject.

In the din­ing-​room they were soon joined by Mary and Kit­ty, who had been too busi­ly en­gaged in their sep­arate apart­ments to make their ap­pear­ance be­fore. One came from her books, and the oth­er from her toi­lette. The faces of both, how­ev­er, were tol­er­ably calm; and no change was vis­ible in ei­ther, ex­cept that the loss of her favourite sis­ter, or the anger which she had her­self in­curred in this busi­ness, had giv­en more of fret­ful­ness than usu­al to the ac­cents of Kit­ty. As for Mary, she was mis­tress enough of her­self to whis­per to Eliz­abeth, with a coun­te­nance of grave re­flec­tion, soon af­ter they were seat­ed at ta­ble:

“This is a most un­for­tu­nate af­fair, and will prob­ably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of mal­ice, and pour in­to the wound­ed bo­soms of each oth­er the balm of sis­ter­ly con­so­la­tion.”

Then, per­ceiv­ing in Eliz­abeth no in­cli­na­tion of re­ply­ing, she added, “Un­hap­py as the event must be for Ly­dia, we may draw from it this use­ful les­son: that loss of virtue in a fe­male is ir­re­triev­able; that one false step in­volves her in end­less ru­in; that her rep­uta­tion is no less brit­tle than it is beau­ti­ful; and that she can­not be too much guard­ed in her be­haviour to­wards the un­de­serv­ing of the oth­er sex.”

Eliz­abeth lift­ed up her eyes in amaze­ment, but was too much op­pressed to make any re­ply. Mary, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to con­sole her­self with such kind of moral ex­trac­tions from the evil be­fore them.

In the af­ter­noon, the two el­der Miss Ben­nets were able to be for half-​an-​hour by them­selves; and Eliz­abeth in­stant­ly availed her­self of the op­por­tu­ni­ty of mak­ing any in­quiries, which Jane was equal­ly ea­ger to sat­is­fy. Af­ter join­ing in gen­er­al lamen­ta­tions over the dread­ful se­quel of this event, which Eliz­abeth con­sid­ered as all but cer­tain, and Miss Ben­net could not as­sert to be whol­ly im­pos­si­ble, the for­mer con­tin­ued the sub­ject, by say­ing, “But tell me all and ev­ery­thing about it which I have not al­ready heard. Give me fur­ther par­tic­ulars. hat did Colonel Forster say? Had they no ap­pre­hen­sion of any­thing be­fore the elope­ment took place? They must have seen them to­geth­er for ev­er.”

“Colonel Forster did own that he had of­ten sus­pect­ed some par­tial­ity, es­pe­cial­ly on Ly­dia’s side, but noth­ing to give him any alarm. I am so grieved for him! His be­haviour was at­ten­tive and kind to the ut­most. He WAS com­ing to us, in or­der to as­sure us of his con­cern, be­fore he had any idea of their not be­ing gone to Scot­land: when that ap­pre­hen­sion first got abroad, it has­tened his jour­ney.”

“And was Den­ny con­vinced that Wick­ham would not mar­ry? Did he know of their in­tend­ing to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Den­ny him­self?”

“Yes; but, when ques­tioned by HIM, Den­ny de­nied know­ing any­thing of their plans, and would not give his re­al opin­ion about it. He did not re­peat his per­sua­sion of their not mar­ry­ing–and from THAT, I am in­clined to hope, he might have been mis­un­der­stood be­fore.”

“And till Colonel Forster came him­self, not one of you en­ter­tained a doubt, I sup­pose, of their be­ing re­al­ly mar­ried?”

“How was it pos­si­ble that such an idea should en­ter our brains? I felt a lit­tle un­easy–a lit­tle fear­ful of my sis­ter’s hap­pi­ness with him in mar­riage, be­cause I knew that his con­duct had not been al­ways quite right. My fa­ther and moth­er knew noth­ing of that; they on­ly felt how im­pru­dent a match it must be. Kit­ty then owned, with a very nat­ural tri­umph on know­ing more than the rest of us, that in Ly­dia’s last let­ter she had pre­pared her for such a step. She had known, it seems, of their be­ing in love with each oth­er, many weeks.”

“But not be­fore they went to Brighton?”

“No, I be­lieve not.”

“And did Colonel Forster ap­pear to think well of Wick­ham him­self? Does he know his re­al char­ac­ter?”

“I must con­fess that he did not speak so well of Wick­ham as he for­mer­ly did. He be­lieved him to be im­pru­dent and ex­trav­agant. And since this sad af­fair has tak­en place, it is said that he left Mery­ton great­ly in debt; but I hope this may be false.”

“Oh, Jane, had we been less se­cret, had we told what we knew of him, this could not have hap­pened!”

“Per­haps it would have been bet­ter,” replied her sis­ter. “But to ex­pose the for­mer faults of any per­son with­out know­ing what their present feel­ings were, seemed un­jus­ti­fi­able. We act­ed with the best in­ten­tions.”

“Could Colonel Forster re­peat the par­tic­ulars of Ly­dia’s note to his wife?”

“He brought it with him for us to see.”

Jane then took it from her pock­et-​book, and gave it to Eliz­abeth. These were the con­tents:

“MY DEAR HAR­RI­ET,

“You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I can­not help laugh­ing my­self at your sur­prise to-​mor­row morn­ing, as soon as I am missed. I am go­ing to Gret­na Green, and if you can­not guess with who, I shall think you a sim­ple­ton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an an­gel. I should nev­er be hap­py with­out him, so think it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Long­bourn of my go­ing, if you do not like it, for it will make the sur­prise the greater, when I write to them and sign my name ‘Ly­dia Wick­ham.’ What a good joke it will be! I can hard­ly write for laugh­ing. Pray make my ex­cus­es to Pratt for not keep­ing my en­gage­ment, and danc­ing with him to-​night. Tell him I hope he will ex­cuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great plea­sure. I shall send for my clothes when I get to Long­bourn; but I wish you would tell Sal­ly to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown be­fore they are packed up. Good-​bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will drink to our good jour­ney.

“Your af­fec­tion­ate friend,

“LY­DIA BEN­NET.”

“Oh! thought­less, thought­less Ly­dia!” cried Eliz­abeth when she had fin­ished it. “What a let­ter is this, to be writ­ten at such a mo­ment! But at least it shows that SHE was se­ri­ous on the sub­ject of their jour­ney. What­ev­er he might af­ter­wards per­suade her to, it was not on her side a SCHEME of in­famy. My poor fa­ther! how he must have felt it!”

“I nev­er saw any­one so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten min­utes. My moth­er was tak­en ill im­me­di­ate­ly, and the whole house in such con­fu­sion!”

“Oh! Jane,” cried Eliz­abeth, “was there a ser­vant be­long­ing to it who did not know the whole sto­ry be­fore the end of the day?”

“I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guard­ed at such a time is very dif­fi­cult. My moth­er was in hys­ter­ics, and though I en­deav­oured to give her ev­ery as­sis­tance in my pow­er, I am afraid I did not do so much as I might have done! But the hor­ror of what might pos­si­bly hap­pen al­most took from me my fac­ul­ties.”

“Your at­ten­dance up­on her has been too much for you. You do not look well. Oh that I had been with you! you have had ev­ery care and anx­iety up­on your­self alone.”

“Mary and Kit­ty have been very kind, and would have shared in ev­ery fa­tigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for ei­ther of them. Kit­ty is slight and del­icate; and Mary stud­ies so much, that her hours of re­pose should not be bro­ken in on. My aunt Phillips came to Long­bourn on Tues­day, af­ter my fa­ther went away; and was so good as to stay till Thurs­day with me. She was of great use and com­fort to us all. And La­dy Lu­cas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednes­day morn­ing to con­dole with us, and of­fered her ser­vices, or any of her daugh­ters’, if they should be of use to us.”

“She had bet­ter have stayed at home,” cried Eliz­abeth; “per­haps she MEANT well, but, un­der such a mis­for­tune as this, one can­not see too lit­tle of one’s neigh­bours. As­sis­tance is im­pos­si­ble; con­do­lence in­suf­fer­able. Let them tri­umph over us at a dis­tance, and be sat­is­fied.”

She then pro­ceed­ed to in­quire in­to the mea­sures which her fa­ther had in­tend­ed to pur­sue, while in town, for the re­cov­ery of his daugh­ter.

“He meant I be­lieve,” replied Jane, “to go to Ep­som, the place where they last changed hors­es, see the pos­til­ions and try if any­thing could be made out from them. His prin­ci­pal ob­ject must be to dis­cov­er the num­ber of the hack­ney coach which took them from Clapham. It had come with a fare from Lon­don; and as he thought that the cir­cum­stance of a gen­tle­man and la­dy’s re­mov­ing from one car­riage in­to an­oth­er might be re­marked he meant to make in­quiries at Clapham. If he could any­how dis­cov­er at what house the coach­man had be­fore set down his fare, he de­ter­mined to make in­quiries there, and hoped it might not be im­pos­si­ble to find out the stand and num­ber of the coach. I do not know of any oth­er de­signs that he had formed; but he was in such a hur­ry to be gone, and his spir­its so great­ly dis­com­posed, that I had dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing out even so much as this.”